Locally: Pullman, Spokane swimmers named USA Swimming Scholastic All-Americans
Two swimmers from Pullman and one from Spokane who had 2022 Winter Junior Olympic qualifying times and GPAs of 3.5 or higher were honored when USA Swimming announced its Scholastic All-Americans for 2021-22.
Michael Hochwalt from the Spokane Waves Aquatic Team received the honor for a second time and William Miller and Jake McCoy of Cougar Aquatics, Pullman High School students, were recognized for the first time.
Hochwalt and Miller are in the class of 2024 and McCoy the class of 2025. All three attended USA Swimming’s National Select Camp earlier this month at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Cougar Aquatics’ release read in part, “it takes an immense amount of dedication, self-motivation and drive to not only perform at a high level in the pool, but also in their academics. … This recognition is much deserved.”
They are the only clubs in Inland Empire Swimming (Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho and Eastern Oregon) to have members earn academic honors.
Basketball
Tickets for Eastern Washington University’s men’s basketball game against Washington State at the Spokane Arena on Nov. 21 at 6 p.m. are on sale now through TicketsWest.com, the sponsoring Spokane Chiefs, Brett Sports and Numerica Credit Union announced.
Ticket prices start at $10. Student tickets will be available starting Oct. 30.
College scene
Two athletes with area ties picked up Great Northwest Athletic Conference player-of-the-week honors for their performances the week of Oct. 3-9.
Jake Levine, a Northwest Nazarene senior forward from Central Valley, received men’s soccer offensive honors after he scored goals in two victories as the Nighthawks pulled into a tie for first place in the GNAC, improving his program record to 28 career goals.
Dawson Strobel, a Montana State Billings, senior from Tekoa, Washington, and North Idaho College, was the men’s golf honoree after collecting his second victory of the fall, winning the Yellowjacket Invitational by one stroke with a 54-hole score of 5-under-par 211, leading MSB to the team title.
• Four former Greater Spokane League standouts, three of them at Northwest Nazarene, are among five from the area named to the GNAC women’s soccer all-academic team.
Northwest Nazarene: Yacine Bitibale, Ferris, junior, 3.26 GPA, her 2nd; Kailyn LaBrosse, Central Valley, jr., 3.54, 3rd; Carolyn Moravec, Lewis and Clark, jr., 3.91, 3rd. Central Washington: Jaxyn Farmen, Medical Lake, senior, 3.75, 3rd. Seattle Pacific: Marissa Bankey, CV, sr., 3.29, 1st.
• Darby McDevitt, an Eastern Oregon junior midfielder/defender from Lakeland of Rathdrum, was named Cascade Collegiate Conference women’s soccer defensive player of the week on Oct. 10 after playing a key role in two Mounties shutouts.
EOU, which has nine shutouts in 12 matches, allowed just six shots on goal during the weekend.
• North Idaho freshman goalkeeper Kaycee Chavez was named NWAC women’s soccer defensive player of the week after she played 135 minutes without allowing a goal. She had four saves in 90 minutes in a 0-0 draw with Columbia Basin and played 45 minutes in a 5-0 win over Wenatchee Valley.
• In his first collegiate race as an attached runner, Gonzaga redshirt freshman Paul Talens finished seventh overall in the Inland Empire Classic in Lewiston on Oct. 8, timing 25 minutes for 8K, and was named West Coast Conference men’s cross country runner of the week.
• Washington State freshman Dori Hathazi won the 200-yard butterfly in the season-opening Chick-Fil-A Invitational swim meet Oct. 8 in Fresno, California, the Cougars’ first individual victory in the meet in at least five years. WSU finished fourth.
• With its performance in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association North Regional tournament at the Stevens Center on its campus that wound up Oct. 9, the Gonzaga men’s team qualified for the ITA Super Regionals Oct. 21-24 in Palo Alto, California. GU will have four singles and two doubles entries in action.
GU seniors Oliver Andersson and Leon Roider won their semifinal in the North Regional main draw doubles, 6-4, 6-4 over an Oregon team, but the finals match wasn’t played because the players had qualified for the Super Regionals. Junior Pablo Gomez Galvan prevailed 6-4, 7-6 over a Washington opponent to win the singles consolation championship.
In Palo Alto, Andersson and Roider will be joined by senior Matthew Hollingworth and junior Sasha Trkulja in doubles, with sophomore Arthus de la Bassetiere joining Hollingworth, Trkulja and Andersson in singles.
Hockey
The Spokane Chiefs reassigned goaltender Manny Panghli to the Langley Rivermen of the Junior A British Columbia league last week. The 18-year-old from Kamloops, British Columbia, appeared in 23 games since being signed in February 2021, but none this season. He remains on Spokane’s protected list.
It brings the Chiefs’ active roster to 22: 13 forwards, seven defensemen and two goalies.
Senior games
Mike Thorpe of Spokane collected two medals in men’s golf in his first time at the Huntsman World Senior Games earlier this month in St. George, Utah.
Playing with a 12 handicap, Thorpe earned bronze in Flight B of the handicap tournament with a net score of 151 for 36 holes. In the 36-hole medal tournament, he won silver in the men’s 70-74 division with a net score of 154.
Tennis
Gonzaga women’s tennis head coach Natalie Pluskota-Hamberg is calling on one of her former collegiate doubles partners at the University of Tennessee, Caitlyn Williams, to be her assistant coach, announcing the hiring last week.
Williams arrives at GU following two years as head coach at University of Tennessee Martin, where she led the Skyhawks to their best single-season Ohio Valley Conference winning percentage since 2017-18.
In 2012, Pluskota-Hamberg and Williams reached the NCAA Championships doubles semifinals and rose as high as ninth in the national doubles rankings.
Track & field
Eastern Washington University director of track and field/cross country Erin Tucker announced two new additions to his coaching staff. Majesty Tutson will coach the throwers, and Jonina Brinson will coach jumpers and multi-events.
Tutson comes from the University of New Orleans, where she was an assistant throws coach since the fall of 2021 after coaching at Alabama State since 2014. She was first a graduate assistant there before being elevated to a full-time assistant in 2016.
Tutson earned her undergraduate degree at Iowa, where she was a decorated thrower from 2009-13. She was a discus All-American in 2013 and qualified for the NCAA regionals all four years competing for the Hawkeyes. She was Iowa’s female track and field MVP as a senior.
Brinson comes from Buena Vista University, an NCAA Division III school in Iowa, where she was the head coach since the spring of 2021. She joined the program as an assistant coach in 2020 before being elevated to the head job. In each of her two seasons, she led the women’s outdoor team to its highest point total at the American Rivers Conference Championships.
After finishing her athletic career at Bethune-Cookman, she stayed on as a graduate assistant coach for the jumps and multi events. She was a 10-time NAIA All-American and a two-time NAIA national champion in the long jump at the University of Mobile before transferring to Bethune-Cookman as a junior.